


Self-Made Man

by apiphile



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Chess Metaphors, M/M, Pathetic fallacy, abuse and torture will do that to a man, abusing the tag field for fun and no profit, how many emotional issues can we hint at, jump cuts are for people too lazy to write transitions and i'm one of them, prudes and telepathy, telepaths are a menace and must be stopped, wildlife as distraction, writing in this voice is weird and difficult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-14
Updated: 2011-06-14
Packaged: 2017-10-20 10:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/211844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apiphile/pseuds/apiphile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which two young gentlemen learn about the concept of boundaries.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Self-Made Man

There are several areas in which Charles causes Erik discomfort, and only one of them is one which he is prepared to voice in the hopes of having his wishes adhered to. He thinks that perhaps if he is voluble enough in his objections to having his thoughts invaded in the name of his own improvement, there is a possibility that this doe-eyed man with his ill-fitting suits and ill-fitting mansion may withdraw the intrusions. Then again, there is little precedent in Erik's life for any man taking his protests as anything other than a source of amusement.

There is very little to be done about any other discomfort he causes. Charles's enthusiasm for non-militaristic solutions requires careful handling which Erik simply hasn't the time for, and his intense desire to treat everyone with kid gloves when it is obvious that they require a hard shove is merely naively charming.

As for the man's effeminate good looks and propensity for staring intently at Erik when he thinks Erik isn't looking (or, knowing Charles, when he knows Erik is looking because he has simply sidled into his mind and seen), there is no more to be done than changing the weather or turning back the tides.

Dusk falls slowly outside the window, blotting the clouds with cerise, and inside the room that Erik sleeps in now, a clock which is no doubt worth more than all of the things he himself owns has just finished chiming eight.

Today Erik failed to persuade Charles Xavier to shoot him in the head at point-blank range. Thus far, because he has not had the opportunity to, and because he has no need to, Erik has failed to point out that he could very well have _made_ the gun fire at him. It would have defeated the purpose of the exercise.

He is sure that, were he pressed on the matter - and Erik does not intend to press him - Charles would also point out that he could just as easily have prevented Erik from having that thought at all.

Erik picks up the gun from his borrowed bed and turns it over in his hands, picturing the intricate mechanisms within as easily as he recalls his own face from the mirror: he is familiar with the workings of weapons. He wonders if to Charles, to whom no man is a closed book, minds are like machines, each a simple pattern of cogs, springs, and hammers - or if there is something more etheral, less concrete about the mind, and that unfathomable ephermalness is what he sees reflected in the man to whom this - this vast mausoleum is home.

A bell rings. It is time to eat, and even this prickles his skin with a flush of distaste; who would ring a bell for their regimented feeding times instead of –

The bell rings again, and Erik tucks the gun into its concealed holster.

The staircases are long, wide, and wooden, but they are held in place with elderly nails, iron ones. Like calcium supporting the body - another metal - the average and even very much above average home, like this one, metal runs through the skeleton and holds everything together.

The walls are dark with wooden panels, hung with paintings Erik has no interest in. The xaviers have kind faces and large eyes, tired smiles, and have left Charles with a fortune that he can only begin to calculate. Erik's enquiries into this have been futile; even Charles is not aware of how much it is worth.

Were he a different sort of man, he might consider robbing him, but Erik does not care much for money. Money is worthless, a means to an end, a tool for manipulating the greedy and vulgar, the corrupt and the easily-led. The kind of men who follow orders.

"Penny for them?" Raven asks, standing in the doorway to the kitchens with a half-empty plate in her hand.

Of course, she is not like her brother. She has to ask and wait for answers instead of just taking them. She also has no pride.

"Just wondering how you and Charles ever managed to keep a house this big all on your own," he murmurs, and perhaps it's the time he has been spending with Charles that makes him surprised at how easily she swallows the lie.

"Oh, we had servants," Raven says dismissively, standing aside to let him into the kitchen.

"You look happier when you're not pretending to be someone else," he tells her, slipping past and into the kitchen, where his footsteps echo off the tiled floors and rebound in a volley from the vast metal refrigerator doors. In a building this big and with resources so endless, apparently a full staff still constitutes "alone".

* * *

There is something to be said for Charles's methods; without them Erik would not have been able to twist an entire radar dish of that size; as the sun sets over the Westerchester estate, Erik cradles the memory of his mother in his heart as gently as she had once held his infant head. It is a precious soap bubble of tenderness in a hard and hostile world, and it is far too fragile and sweet a thing for him to let lie in the surface of his mind, where Charles - or worse, _Emma_ \- might sully it with use.

Erik swaddles the warmth of his mother's hand, the darkness and the cnadles, wraps their memory in protective iron layers, and buries it safely deep down in his mind.

"Erik?"

Charles has this talent for showing up when Erik would rather be alone. He stands before Charles can reach him and sit, tethering them both to this stone bench. "Charles."

"I had thought," Charles says, somewhat breathless, as if he has been running (though there isn't a speck of sweat on his girlish face), "that perhaps we could enhance your powers by making it easier for you to attain your - your happier, more serene memories."

"I don't have a lot of happy memories," says Erik, who has carefully inhumed the ones he _does_ have behind strong walls, where they cannot pollute the purity of his vengeance with unneeded and distracting compassion.

"Then it's all the more important to find the ones you _do_ have," says Charles, with one of _those_ smiles. They are readable, even obvious, when Erik takes the time. He chooses not to take the time.

"You have already unlocked -"

"There could be so much _more_ ," Charles says, his eyes shining with that peculiar fervor they have when he is filled with whatever ideal it is that drives him.

Erik tries hard not to think of the words 'means to an end', and smiles a smile that contains all his teeth and none of his limited and jealously-guarded joy. "If you think it will help."

Charles clasps his hand warmly. He has a chain-link bracelet around his wrist and for a moment, unthinking, Erik pulls the links toward him, his smile frozen in place like a photograph of some other man's affability. When he looks to Charles the man is studying him intently.

"I thought it might help," Charles says, holding his gaze for too long as the first of the evening's conspicuously suicidal bats flits between them and crashes into the wall, clearly disoriented by some unheard utterance of Banshee's. "To know that you can stop my hand as easily as I could stop yours."

He knows, then, what is actually being offered. Another bat circles them and vanishes in a flurry of too-fast wings, as the night sends emissaries of darkness to increase the shadows behind each blade of grass and bush. Erik has slept in the open through worse nights than this, but Charles, his fingers still tucked tightly around the bones of his hand, pulls him slowly toward the house.

* * *

Charles’s study is becoming familiar to Erik, now; the apparently unending wood panelling of the Xavier mansion, the high ceilings and the hypnotic rugs have extended into this inner sanctum as relentlessly as rot, but there is an air about the place which marks it out as Charles’s rather than generically “Xavier”. The endless rows of books, which stand in illogical patterns that nestle genetics against philosophy, T.H. White against Peter Medawar, Wollstonecroft and Crick making unlikely bedfellows, are as much a mark of his person as the half-finished chess game atop a tiny table, or the NASA clock.

A fire is heaped high in the hearth, reflecting perhaps the Xavier mansion’s talent for turning even the summer into a chilling experience, and as Erik settles himself into his customary chair the wood that tops the coal settles a little too, popping and crumpling under its own weight.

“Are you ready?” Charles asks politely, when Erik has stilled himself in the high-backed chair and stopped examining the bookshelves with detached interest, as he does every time.

“Does it matter?” he asks, almost blithely, sweeping Charles’s face for some sign of when he intends to do and when he intends to do it, as if this early-warning system will be of any more use to him than the Americans’ will to them.

When the body is the plaything of others, and nothing - not sleep, food, defecation, and sometimes even air - is at one's own control, the mind and its impregnable nature becomes the final fortress of the self.

Erik watches Charles press his fingers to his temple - perhaps a steadying, or amplifying influence on his power, the way that Erik finds extending his outstretched fingers improves his 'aim' - and knows that being able to pull his hand back down at the wrist, like the collar of some dog, is no match for the probing fingers of consciousness that slide behind his skin, his skull.

"Relax," Charles says, soothing, "let me in."

Erik can barely contain his derision. _Relax_. As if he has or ever will do such a thing.

"I can't help you if you lock me out -"

“I’d scarcely believe my lack of cooperation an impediment to you, Charles,” he murmurs, opening one eye on the firelight dancing on the study walls.

“On the contrary, I will do _nothing_ without your permission,” Charles says, a little sharply, as if offended; he flicks his hair from his forehead and settles his hand back into position. “I promise.”

As Erik closes his eyes, he very pointedly recalls the first person who promised he was going to help the young Erik Lehnsherr, not harm him. Although the memory brings bile into his throat and pain into his body, he makes sure to remember every single last white-hot detail, every flinch and choke, his palms prickling with sweat and his heart thundering with a fury that could crush mountains if only he knew how.

When he opens his eyes, Charles has extended his hand toward him and is almost but not quite touching the scar on Erik’s lip. His eyes narrow as he attempts to regain his poise in the face of Erik’s gaze, but Erik knows he saw fear in them.

“You’ll forgive me,” Erik says with a mirthless smile, reaching up to clutch Charles’s wrist before he can prod the old wound like some child fascinated by a sailor’s tattoo, “if I don’t put too much face in the promises of powerful men.”

“We don’t have to,” Charles assures him, relaxing his arm in Erik’s grip. In anyone else Erik might think this a kind of submission to his will, but he has no doubt Charles could turn him into a drooling imbecile without so much as flexing his fingers. Or rather, he has doubt, but he also has caution and no small amount of fear. “It’s all right. Maybe you have sufficient control – a radar dish is after all very impressive.”

The smile Erik bestows on him feels more like the snarl of a nervous animal as muscles of his face move unwillingly, and his hand relinquishes its grip but not its possition on Charles’s arm. “Only a coward lets fear stand in the way of greatness.”

“And only a fool ignores the good sense in caution,” Charles chides him. “But in this case – since I’m sure I can’t hurt _you_ ¬“

Erik is also sure that Charles can’t hurt him. He’s sure that no one can, outside of the conventional sense of breaking his bones; Charles is maybe five inches shorter than him and he looks constructed from a damp paper towels and confidence. No, Charles can’t hurt him, but there is no telling what his mind might be capable of.

“Alright,” Erik says, sitting back in his chair as if he is submitting to an examination by a doctor, “Do your worst.”

He watches Charles with half-closed eyes as the eyelash-blurred chiaroscuro image of him fixes its fingers to its temples, and he forces himself to breathe calmly, slowly, and to watch only the out-of-focus look of intent concentration on Charles’s face.

At first there is little but the spotting of arbitrary sensations like early rain on a windowpane: the taste of German chocolate, wildflowers trampled outside the china clay works, the pattern of hotel wallpaper in Geneva, stomachache and chalk tablets, the itch of bedbug bites on his shins so immediate that he wants to reach down and scratch –

 _The ceiling is a thousand miles away and he has seen it so many times that it might be an old friend; the ceiling is the only thing in this room which wishes him no harm, and Erik tries to swallow around the plates on his tongue but ends up choking on spit._

A lingering fragment of wood in the study fire pops and sparks fly, unheeded, into the dark as Erik bites briefly on the tip of his tongue. The pain is real but brief, swept away in a deluge of other sensations which have no cause:

 _The generator in the corner of the room emits a low and nauseating hum. Schmidt talks delightedly of its provenance as Erik tests himself against the wide leather straps that hold him every four inches the length of his body to this autopsy table. Schmidt seems to glow when he stands beside the generator, his face lit up with pride and pleasure; he is filled with joy at the plates he has placed on Erik’s tongue._

“Steady,” Charles murmurs.

 _Schmidt’s joy is a dangerous thing._

 _He pushes buttons and turns dials, his glasses still cracked from the tin mug Erik succeed in flinging at his face yesterday. Schmidt hums something, some Wagner, something, as he fiddles and jiggles with settings on his infernal generator._

 _And all too soon it is ready._

“Erik.”

 _Erik’s breath slows until he feels his chest is frozen in place, until he can count in long seconds the spaces between the beats of his agitated heart, a slow death march of vital signs winding down to an inevitable halt, entropy in the tiny universe of his body, as Schmidt’s generator turns milliseconds into glacial eternities. Assurances mean nothing, Schmidt does not know what he is doing, and Erik Lehnsherr, angular and silent teenager filled with untapped fury, is going to die._

“Fear of death is a powerful protecting force,” Charles says, touching Erik on the forearm as Erik pries his sweat-slick eyelids open on the dark study. “But it limits you, too.”

Erik loosens his own fingers from the arm-rests of the chair with difficulty, and gives Charles another humourless smile. “Dying won’t achieve anything.” He mentally amends _if I die **before** Schmidt_ , forgetting in his vulnerable state that locked lips and a stilled larynx are no barrier to communication between them.

Charles shakes his head. “Do you ever think about what you will do _after_ you’ve avenged yourself?”

 _Not with any great enthusiasm_ , Erik thinks, somewhat wryly. Aloud he merely says, “Fester in prison, alone with my ghosts.”

“You won’t be alone.” Charles clears his throat. “Whatever happens, you won’t be alone.”

Erik wonders whom, precisely, Charles wishes to reassure; he has been alone for long enough to have no fear of _that_. The clock on the mantel in _this_ room is more modern, a sleek brushed-steel timepiece with black Roman numerals as sharp and stark as midday shadows, and its tick echoes in the silence between their words. Erik stops the cogs within and at last wipes the drying perspiration from his upper lip.

“This serenity you think I should experience,” he says, filing away the fear and agony of the current that once ran through his skeleton for use in future, for stoking the unceasing heat of his anger, “isn’t going to come from being reminded of torture.”

He is not petty enough to gain satisfaction from the way Charles discreetly flinches. The firelight is low now, illuminating the room in strange and menacing ways and casting shadows upward on Charles’s soft and feminine face. The house is as quiet as a cemetery now that the clock is stopped, whatever revelries or studies their protégés are engaged in are too far removed from this sanctuary for their noise to penetrate.

“You hadn’t forgotten,” Charles says mildly, watching him.

“And I never will.”

“You _can_ , if you would –”

“ _No_ ,” Erik snaps. He barely notices the tacks in his chair’s upholstery shattering like so many tiny fragmentation grenades. “No, you will not take this – take anything of me.”

Charles holds his hands up, palms facing, a gesture for peace, for _stop_. “Only if you want. I am _offering_ , not forcing it on you.” He smiles wanly, and waves with a somewhat limp hand to their unfinished game, the board almost invisible in the low light. “Perhaps we should turn to something less fraught, for now?”

“We’ve barely begun.”

“If you’re sure –” Charles begins, hiding the eagerness in his voice poorly as he sits forward in his chair.

“I asked you to shoot me in the _head_ ,” Erik says, with a real smile this time, “and you chickened out.”

“Mm, well, I’m afraid perhaps I should chicken out again for the time being and concentrate on the chess,” Charles says, rueful; Erik isn’t sure how much of this expression is put on. “Or you are going to beat me.”

“I’m going to beat you anyway,” Erik assures him. “But if you’d like to hasten my victory we can return to the game.”

Charles gets up almost gratefully and pulls the low table over with all the grace and elegance of a stuffed animal. The firelight, what little there is left of it in the increasingly gloomy room, dances lazily up the side of Charles’s body and paints orange smears on his face. Erik notes the long shadows of the chessmen and the second forest of chess pieces they create upon the hidden board.

Charles returns to his chair, and the shadow he has cast over Erik retreats back into the general murk. The chessmen stand as if facing the embers of a volcano, torn between leaning toward the heat and fleeing for safety.

“You’ll run up against something you don’t want to see if you poke around in there too much,” Erik warns, a joking tone concealing the very real threat of the truth.

“Do you mean the numerous times you’ve _tortured_ people for information,” Charles says severely, examining the chessboard for a second before shooting Erik a look that is laced with disappointment like quartz through granite, “or your homosexuality?”

“Well,” Erik says, forcing himself to smile, “they’ll both end with me locked away somewhere.”

“One of them involves a flattering external view of me,” Charles says a little less censoriously, “and the other makes me fear for you.”

“For _me_?” Erik looks up from the chess board again and frowns.

“I can only guess what effect such disregard for life must have on the man I know you _can_ be,” Charles says, apparently trying to stare him down, his finger pressed to the crown atop his king as if he plans to move it.

“Your concern is entirely misplaced.” Erik shows his teeth in another of his widening repertoire of smiles unrelated to joy or good humour. “ _I_ still have all my teeth.”

“You gain no pleasure from destroying these people,” Charles says with simple certainty. “I _know_ you can be more than the weapon you believe yourself to be.”

Erik does not contradict him, only focuses on the pattern of wooden chessmen on the chessboard; Charles is in a position where he can either take Erik’s remaining bishop, or execute a move which will take none of his men but leave him in place to put Erik in check should he attempt to move his king anywhere. Erik believes that Charles would rather place his knight in danger for the chance of a decisive strike against the seat of greater power, even an inconclusive one, than opt for a confirmed removal of a threat.

Charles takes his bishop.

Irritated, Erik moves against the knight. It is true his king is now more vulnerable, but on the other hand, Charles has no more knights, no bishops, and only one rook. Whether this is compensation for Erik’s no bishops and no queen remains to be seen.

“I do not think you will accept peace when it comes,” Charles says, almost sadly, ignoring the board and instead trying to gather Erik into his vast blue eyes.

“There is no possibility of peace,” Erik says, making a concerted effort not to wrap the chain-link bracelet tight around Charles’s wrist until the skin breaks. What is the use of speculating on the impossible? He gets to his feet and extends his hand. “Ask me.”

Charles’s smile is the flicker of firelight in some forgotten room. “I thought _I_ was the mind-reader.”

“Some things don’t require your particular talents for them to be very obvious,” Erik replies with what he hopes is a wry smile rather than a condescending one.

“Should I ask, when you already know the answer?” Charles asks, rubbing the side of his face. He is smiling, a gentle smile that still reeks of victory.

“Then why are you sitting behind a chessboard,” Erik asks, raising his eyebrows in invitation, “clothed?”

Charles laughs so hard that he almost knocks the chessmen over. “Subtlety isn’t one of your best-honed qualities, my friend.”

Erik shrugs minutely and extends his hand more pointedly, a small jerk of the elbow underlining the invitation. “Well?”

“I don’t _think_ the study is an appropriate place for this,” Charles says, getting to his feet at last, and running a hand through his hair as unsteadily as a drunk. He inclines his head toward the door, and does not take Erik’s hand.

Erik begs to differ; there are very few places in the world which are inappropriate for sex when there’s no one else there, but he’s sure Charles doesn’t want to know about that. His determined and only slightly wobbly steps along the corridors suggest an urgency and also a lack of practical experience, and Erik cannot decide if he is surprised or not.

The labyrinthine nature of the Xavier mansion is such that it takes several minutes of heavy breathing and expectation, rattling through dark passageways like blood cells racing for an organ, to reach the bedroom that Charles has nominated as his own. Erik doesn’t fully understand why it must be this specific room when there are dozens standing empty and silent, but he supposes it is more _appropriateness_.

Just as Erik is beginning to wonder if this diversion into the depths of the house is an evasive tactic from a suddenly-nervous Charles, the man in question stops in front of him and pulls open a door into what Erik assumes is his room. There is a model of some molecular structure balanced on the desk, made of matchsticks and ball-bearings, and a framed photograph of a publicity shot of Einstein beside the single bed.

Erik makes a point of not raising his eyebrows, and Charles closes the door behind them.

“Well,” Charles says, uncertainly.

“Well,” Erik agrees. “You’re still not naked.”

“You’re right,” Charles says, looking down at himself and inhaling. He is in fact very much clothed.

Erik leans on the closed door and makes a _get on with it_ gesture.

“After you,” Charles says, swallowing. He does look nervous, Erik thinks, an odd combination of nervous and determined. This hesitance on him is unusual, and even almost charming.

“If you prefer,” Erik mutters, reaching down to pull his still-buttoned shirt up over his head. He has no qualms about undressing in front of the watchful gaze of someone else; after all, it has been commonplace in his life for decades now, and it ceased to be an intrusion of any kind years ago. His mind is a beautiful blank white plate of nothingness as he folds the shirt in half, undoes and removes his trousers, and finally stands naked and wholly-balanced at the foot of Charles’s bed.

“Well,” Charles repeats, licking his lips as he untucks his shirt. “I suppose it’s my turn.”

“That is … usually how it works,” Erik agrees.

Charles has skin like a child. He is almost oddly hairless but for some erratic tufts about his chest and a tenacious streak leading the way from his navel to his penis. With this one noticeable exception, everything about him is soft – his skin, his hair, his chest and arms, his eyes, and his voice – the only parts of Charles that are hard are his mind and, currently, his cock.

“I know, not very impressive,” Charles says with a half-laugh, extending his arms to either side, _what can you do_. “I hope you don’t mind. The life of luxury doesn’t really leave one looking like much of a titan.”

Erik does not comment. He knows himself, his steely structure, wiry hair, and endless chaotic pattern of little white scars with their myriad stories (here a plate glass window, here a bullet graze, there a three-metre fall onto jagged concrete, there a cruel instrument constructed of wood and ceramics to make sure he could not prevent its entry), and he knows within a fiftieth of a Newton what it can and cannot withstand, but he’s never tested it with tenderness before. He’s almost afraid to try.

“You have suffered a great deal,” Charles says, his enormous blue eyes sweeping the encoded language of scar tissue as if he understands the things it conceals.

“Spare me your sympathy.”

“I can’t do that, Erik.” Charles puts his hand on the back of Erik’s neck, exerting a subtle pressure to pull his head down.

He will be far from the first man that Erik has fucked, but usually there has been some _reason_ : a key, a password, some man who has no idea what evil he protects and cannot simply be coerced without unsettling Erik’s delicate sense of morality. This is pure self-indulgence; Charles is distractingly attractive, a man of powerful intellect and admirable if naive heart. It would be madness _not_ to be attached to him.

With this weak excuse in place, Erik seizes the initiative and the sides of Charles’s head, and kisses him with a hunger that is already four-fifths regret. He clings to the kiss, the soft pressure of Charles’s lips, the taste of his mouth, in determination to keep his footing on the seemingly unstoppable descent into uprofitable recklessness.

It is the sharp intake of breath that unseats him, the fraction of a second that Charles pulls away to gulp down air before kissing back with renewed enthusiasm and a barely-audible noise of assent and encouragement in his throat. This sound, this agreement drives a stake through Erik’s self-control and pins it as helpless as a butterfly to board; it tugs at his nerves and makes him press his body against Charles, to feel his heartbeat and warmth. Another body, superficially different but beneath the scars and softness, the same next step taken by evolution, the same greatness only just beginning. _Better men_.

Erik clutches Charles’s face and kisses him manically, with no regard for his thoughts; the driving force of them, now, is in any case obscene. No foothold can be made, he realises amid the spectre and reality of Charles’s hands moving with fascinated determination over his body, no information worth gleaning can be gotten while he is this aroused. Which is useful, as he’s also enjoying it.

He puts his mouth against Charles’s ear, breathing hard, but at the last minute swallows the words he’d intended (his hands firm and fast on Charles’s shoulders, holding him safely in place) and only thinks, in graphic detail, what he had meant to say.

“Go on,” Charles murmurs, and for a moment Erik cannot tell if the words are in his ear or his head, but pleasant though their content is their presence confirms (as he dips, drops til his knees touch a carpet that costs more than most houses) what Charles has already told him: he is never alone now.

Erik steadies himself with his hands on Charles’s hips (and even these are soft to touch), and kisses his belly, the narrow line of hair that draws him down from navel to cock like the landing strip of an airport. And _here_ Charles is hard, his slim cock standing out like a little white radio mast in the surprisingly dense forest of auburn hair.

Erik bestows a kiss to the tip of this, too, and as Charles runs his fingers through his hair, he can feel not only fingertips but impatience, transferred from another mind to his as simply as their saliva had travelled from lip to lip.

He opens his mouth, breathing hot and wet and uneven over the head of Charles’s cock; he wonders if the man ever loses control of himself, his power, because of _this_. Only one way to find out.

 _Erik, please_.

And his fingers tighten conspicuously in Erik’s hair.

Erik takes Charles’s suspiciously clean-tasting cock on his tongue, and closes his mouth on smooth skin; Charles’s fingers relax and splay on his scalp, and whether his _yes_ of approval is internal or vocal seems irrelevant – its satisfaction is the chief matter. Charles sounds wholly satisfied.

Erik flexes his fingers on Charles’s hips and his tongue along the underside of Charles’s cock, pressing it against the roof of his mouth and inhaling what appears to be mostly pubic hair.

* * *

One of the things Erik feels he should have guessed about Charles is that the man is a prude.

Not prude enough to object to having his cock sucked, of course, not prude enough to be at all perturbed by kissing or by knotting his fingers painfully hard through Erik’s hair, but prude enough that he cannot, it seems, just open his mouth and _ask_ or even _tell_ Erik what he wants.

But he is, it seems, more than happy to broadcast his desires as clearly as television images directly into Erik’s head, even if – as Erik looks up to catch his eye, his mouth still full and occupied – even if Charles is red-faced at his own thoughts.

Erik moves to acquiesce.

Charles’s cock inside him is not the problem. His mind, probing deeper into Erik’s like a drill into the soft tissues of his body and with about as much concern for his wishes as Schmidt, is a much greater obstacle to any enjoyment beyond the physical that Erik might gain from this.

His _no_ is half-internal, half-vocal, an emphatic mumble and an inner shout. Charles freezes with his hands on Erik’s flanks, immediately begins trying to catch his eye even as Erik turns his head away to face ahead.

“I’m sorry, I thought you wanted –”

“You _know_ what I object to,” Erik says more clearly, unmoving. His body is unperturbed, aroused even (still), demanding that he push back against the soft but insistent pressure of Charles’s thighs, but his mind is an abrupt iron wall. He tries to pull the flush from his cheeks through force of will alone but his blood will not obey him the way metal does.

“I thought it might –”

“Help? The good memories I have – if I have any – are from before I was ten years old,” Erik snorts, aware that there is almost no situation more absurd than this in which to discuss what Charles is now bent on discussing. He can feel Charles’s hands become uncertain, his cock going limp and sliding slowly out of him. “Please, continue with my body, but leave my mind _alone_ , at least now.”

“Even –” Charles begins, and Erik pulls the chain-link bracelet until Charles’s hand leaves his flank and hits Charles in the side of the head.

“You are an intelligent man,” Erik grimaces, hitting Charles in the head with his own wrist again, “and while you may not have heard the word often, I am sure you understand ‘no’.”

The half of Charles’s expression that Erik can see in this awkward position looks sheepish now, his hand – which Erik releases without another thought – coming to brush the hair from his own forehead as it sweeps down again. “I, er. Forgive me. I wasn’t thinking … clearly.”

Erik treats him to a real smile, a warm smile, and reaches back to pat him condescendingly on the arm. “I’m sure that would be a lot easier if you kept your mind inside your own head.”

“Actually,” Charles says ruefully, “it would probably be easier if I kept my penis inside my underpants, but I rather prefer it where it is.”

“Yes,” Erik says, almost laughing. “I think I agree.”


End file.
